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 The
Dowbrigade has discovered that although busses and subways in Boston
run much diminished schedules on Sundays, with meticulous planning and
split-second
timing it is possible to get from Malden to the tennis courts in under
an hour, even on that Godly day.
As I waited for the first bus on my route, the 108, which stops right
in front of our house, I popped into my cheapo CD player the disk I burned
last night just for that purpose. Old reggae from the Heptones
got me to the Malden Center stop on the Orange Line, then the sweet acapella
of the Persuasions.
Finally, the train pulled into Downtown Crossing, the labyrinthine underground
complex which unites the Orange, Red and Green lines and, as a bonus,
features a direct entrance to Filene’s Basement. I needed to navigate
the narrow
Orange
Line platform, race down two flights of stairs, down an underground concourse,
up a short set of steps and across two sets of Green Line tracks and
dash down a final stairwell onto the Red Line outbound platform, within
2 minutes, in order to catch the 9:15 train to Cambridge, Central Square
being the closest subway stop to the Just Don’t Suck Tennis Club.
Just as the doors of my Orange Line train opened (I could barely hear
the annoyingly androgynous announcer intone "Change here for the Red
and Green Lines" with my headphones on) when the playlist I was listening
to sprung up with Moby’s techno re-mix of the theme from "Mission Impossible". It
was perfect.
As I stepped off the train, I was instantly enveloped in a world of
choreographed precision in which every detail had stark definition and
significance. The soundtrack took over my Central Nervous System and
I began moving in smooth and stylized unpredictable jerks, like a boxer
bobbing and weaving to make a more elusive target. My eyes shot around
the station in time to the music, cutting reality into diffuse shots,
glimpses and quick cuts; a face watching out of the corner of \one eye,
a buff businessman holding too tightly to a slick atachee case, a suspicious
bulge under the My Little Pony blanket covering an innocent looking baby
stroller.
My feet moved to the beat of the tense techno strains of MI.
I deftly sidestepped two clueless tourists studying the system map like
Egyptologist trying to decipher previously unknown hieroglyphics inside
a pyramid, lept lightly over the opened guitar case of an overtly gay
bleached blond Rasta, and slipped adroitly between two concrete columns,
disappearing from the sight of anyone who happened to be on my tail.
As the music’s staccato pace quickened with tension I found my stairwell
and bolted up two steps at a stride, still in time to the music. Emerging
on the Green line complex my eyes chopped the scene into sharp, revealing
shots, cutaways revealing a professors umbrella, an odd bag of fruit,
a particularly repulsive hairdo, and plotting a path across the two
trolley tracks between where I was standing and the stairwell to the
Red Line.
Like a mad ballerina I dashed, juking and feinting, shooting
glances left and right, searching for danger, the opposition, the unexpected,
inevitable, ultimate sanction. The music was building to its dramatic
crescendo. I was moving at a great pace now, my feet dancing over
the tracks like Arthur Murray possessed, moving surely and lightly like
the seasoned pro I was.
I was going to make it. I had a full 30 seconds to get down the
stairs and into the Red Line train. 4 stops to Central. I’d be
on the court in 15 minutes. As a finishing flourish to shake off any
surviving tails, I faked towards the stairway to the left, then darted
between a cement bench and a huge column toward the right stairway –
and smack into an 87-year-old Chinese grandmother retuning from the Chinatown
markets loaded down with boxes bags and baskets. We both went sprawling
on the cold grimy floor of the station. Small white
feathers had escaped from one of her many packages and lay on both our
bodies, and the floor. A few still hung in the air.
Thank God she wasn’t hurt or a lawyer! I helped her to her feet,
apologizing profusely, and offering (stupidly) to replace her feathers. She
addressed me at length in Chinese, and though understanding not a word
I felt chastised and chagrinned.
Needless to say, I missed the train, and finally got to the courts still
shaking from my close escape. However, had I not had that fortuitous run-in
with the Nationalist Chinese agent, the highly-trained hit squad waiting
for me at the foot of the right stairway disguised as a troop of highly
decorated girl scouts might have done me in.
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